'I almost lost everything'

F.S. shooting victim and daughter discuss '93 shooting's impact

Posted
Tuesday, December 3, 2013 2:05 pm

Robert Giugliano and his daughter, Dina, are grateful for the lives they have after a fateful day 20 years ago.

By Vikas Girdhar

“I couldn’t believe it. When I started seeing people being hit by the bullets, that’s when I knew it was real. Before I knew it, he was 10 feet away from me. He pointed it right at me and fired two shots then it went quiet.”

Robert Giugliano recounted the horror he faced 20 years ago on Dec. 7, 1993, the day that Colin Ferguson shot 25 passengers aboard a train from Manhattan’s Pennsylvania Station on the Long Island Rail Road during the evening rush hour. Six were killed. The other 19 live with the horrific memories of that massacre.

The six people killed were Maria Magtoto, 30, of Westbury, who Giugliano attempted to save by yelling at her not to get up from the floor as Ferguson approached; James Gorycki, 51, of Mineola; Amy Federici, 27, of Mineola; Richard Nettleton, 24, of Roslyn Heights; Mi Kyun Kim, 27, of New Hyde Park; and Dennis McCarthy, 52, of Mineola, the husband of Carolyn McCarthy, who was elected to Congress in 1996 as a gun control advocate.

“I think that it’s so important to know that the grief is there,” said McCarthy, whose son, Kevin, was also nearly killed with his father. “There is never closure. I hate that word and I hear it all the time. ‘Well, at least this will bring closure.’ It will never bring closure. How can it bring closure?” With a holiday wreath, McCarthy visits the Merillon Avenue station — where the shooting occurred — on every anniversary.

Kim’s death inspired her friend, Charlie Minn, to direct a 2013 film about the shooting entitled Long Island Massacre.

“My purpose was to honor the victims,” Minn, of Manhasset Hills, told the Herald. “I grew up 10 minutes from where it happened. I feel that the media glorifies the killer. Call them killer ‘X.’ Why name them? Why make them famous? When you’re killing somebody, you’re killing 10 people because you’re destroying 10 lives: their friends, family and loved ones.”

Giugliano, who was living in Franklin Square at the time of the shooting, was 38, married, with three daughters. He was the last person shot on the train.

Sid Tanenbaum, who lived in Woodmere and owned a metal-stamping shop in Far Rockaway, where he was known more for his charitable ways than his two-handed set shot, has been honored for the past 30 years with a basketball tournament that raises scholarship money for students in the Five Towns.